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People have shared that many of those things didn't work, developers don't care about reviews of an abandoned app, refund process probably costs you more in time than you would get, and Google is not really known for their good support.

You shouldn't go through that much effort for something you already paid and obviously malicious/unethical approach caused you problems. If there are things in favour of piracy, it is in cases like this.

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I agree with a lot of what you’re saying. At the same time piracy in this case feels short sighted to me.

If the community supported the dev, then both might get what they want, i.e. a maintained app and some income. With negative reviews a cheaper competitor might appear due to demand. But with piracy the app is even more likely to get abandoned and no alternative will show up either.

Then again if the ecosystem is indeed that bad, perhaps this is the way to torch it even more. Still, google plans to block sideloading and then I guess we’re at their mercy.

Do you consider it piracy when the user paid for a lifetime license, which then quits working, so the user modifies the app to keep the feature working?

I don't, since it was a lifetime license.

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